Zack Snyder says Ryan Reynolds was “up for” donning his Green Lantern ring once more in Justice League, calling the longtime Snyder Cut champion a “great sport.” Spoilers for Zack Snyder‘s Justice League follow. Ahead of Snyder’s four-hour director’s cut released March 18 on HBO Max, the filmmaker confirmed rumors that he conceived an idea to have Reynolds return as Hal Jordan alongside a second member of the Green Lantern Corps: John Stewart. But studio Warner Bros. blocked a Stewart cameo, preferring instead to save the ring-wearing superhero for later, so a compromised was reached: in the epilogue chapter of the Snyder Cut, it’s the newly revealed Martian Manhunter (Harry Lennix) who meets with Batman (Ben Affleck).
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“The truth is, I didn’t really get [far with that idea]. We never really talked, and there was a time when — and this was a while ago, where … my idea was there was gonna be a Green Lantern in the movie, and I’ll talk more about this in the future,” Snyder told YouTuber Wonder Meg. “But there was a Green Lantern in the movie … but then we started to kick around this idea like, ‘Maybe if we brought Ryan in there could be two Green Lanterns in the movie,’ sort of suggest a little bit more of the Corps kind of concept. But anyway, that’s the reality.”
Snyder added, “And it was a fun game to play with Ryan because he’s up for it. I just think that he’s a great sport and he’s been nothing but [supportive]. He supported the cause for a long time.”
Snyder first told The Hollywood Reporter there was an idea for a Lantern that “wasn’t Ryan,” explaining: “I thought that if we had gone down this path of Green Lantern I would have had to have Ryan as the additional Lantern. [Reynolds would have been there] as well as another Lantern, but that’s a different story.”
Days later, Snyder revealed Stewart as the identity of the other Lantern he wanted to appear in the epilogue chapter of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
“We shot a version of this scene with Green Lantern, but the studio really fought me and said, ‘We really don’t want you to do Green Lantern,’” Snyder told Vanity Fair about Batman’s meeting with the shape-shifting Martian Manhunter. “So I made a deal with them, and they let me do this [instead].”
Explaining the studio’s reason for vetoing Stewart’s live-action debut in the Snyder Cut, the filmmaker said, “They were like, ‘We have plans for John Stewart and we want to do our own announcement.’ So I said all right, I’ll give you that. So [Martian Manhunter] was the compromise.”
Two members of the Green Lantern Corps do appear in the Snyder Cut: Yalan Gur, who is killed by Darkseid (Ray Porter) in the history lesson narrated by Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and Kilowog, whose corpse can be seen when Superman (Henry Cavill) is shown hovering above ruins in the Knightmare future.
Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Ciarán Hinds, Ray Porter, Joe Manganiello, and Jared Leto, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.
